Chanel Hydra Beauty Micro Serum

I've been holding onto this product for a while before I did a review - if for nothing else just for the price. This serum is £66 and while I've been dipping my toes into more expensive serums there are some great serums you can pick up on more of a budget. I picked this up after Caroline Hirons mentioned it being worth picking up (surprise, surprise) but I actually picked it up in Duty Free on my trip to Amsterdam to save myself some money. So lets have a look.

The texture on this is interesting, it holds together like a gel when you pump it out onto the back of your hand but when you try to spread it across your face it feels very liquid and has almost a watery silicone type slip to it. It does attract and lock in moisture on the skin and feels great. The little bubbles in the bottle burst as you pump the product out so it's completely smooth on the skin - I was a little surprised that it wasn't at all lumpy or bumpy as your spread it across your skin.

The Hydra Beauty Micro Serum has the same scent as a lot of the other products in Chanel's skincare range. If you're really sensitive to fragrance you might want to keep it in mind that it is present in this product. It has a slightly perfume-y sweet scent that is pleasant and not what I would call over-powering.

The packaging isn't my favourite. The pump is nice and sturdy and the lid is reasonably secure. The bottle is plastic so with all of that in mind, I can see it being good for travel. However for the price of the product, it doesn't feel overly luxurious and I feel like the packaging it designed to trick the eye into thinking you get more product than you do. The bottle is rectangular but the product is actually contained in a cylinder inside of the bottle so there's excess packaging. Aesthetically it's nice but it does beg the question are Chanel trying to make it look like a better deal?

All-in-all, I wanted this review to end in a "is it worth your money?" and if I'm honest, I'm not sure it is. Don't get me wrong I do really like it and I've enjoyed using it and it makes my skin feel great. However with the cheap feeling packaging and the lack of any seemingly expensive ingredients, I do think the price is steep.

By Terry Ombre Black Stars - The Review

So let me kick things off by saying, these are some very pricey eyeshadow sticks. I finally caved and bought myself a couple just to see if they were all that the bloggers have been saying they are, and honestly? I'm not sure.

From a format point of view they are beautifully packaged in gold with a band around the base of the shadow stick indicating the colour so if you have multiple shades it's easy to differentiate which is nice. They are also a twist-up format which negates the need for one of those jumbo sharpeners which again works in the products favour.

My First Ombre Blackstar purchase was "Misty Rock" and this shade alone is no-doubt worth the money. It's beautiful. While many of the high-street brands are coming out with comparable products, I haven't seen a Misty Rock dupe among the aisles of Boots yet. Mistry Rock is a light pink-y shade with a gorgeous silvery sparkle-y iridescence to it that give it an almost wet-look on the eye, but it's still pretty and very subtle and fresh looking which has been lovely for the beginning of spring (in other news, Manchester is finally seeing the sun for the first time in what feels like years, but I digress).

Had I just purchased Mistry Rock and done this review on that shade alone, this would have been a rave review, but having loved that shade, I also picked up "Brown Perfection", which comparatively was slightly disappointing. Don't get me wrong it's still a lovely product, I just don't think it has the uniqueness that in my eyes makes Misty Rock worth the money. The medium-deep bronzey brown makes a lovely liner shade but if you try to smudge it all over the lid it sheers out so quickly. While you can apply Misty Rock from the stick and smudge it with your fingers I think Brown Perfection needs a brush so that you don't blend all of the colour away too quickly. Brown Perfection looks lovely when you use it, it just takes a bit more work.

There are a couple more colours in the line that I've been eyeing up but I'm definitely going to have to swatch extensively in store before I commit, seems like the lighter shades are easier to work with than the darker ones to me but I'll update if I find any different.